Sestina for El Barrio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Angela Canales

Sestina for El Barrio

By Angela Canales

Under a pale sun, a dark-haired woman sweeps glass smashed in last night’ s brawl. Scattered shards are edged in blood. Across the street a boy dribbles a ball—a steady beat like fired shots. The woman brushes silt and sings: mi amor volverá (my love will come back).

Around the corner, Pacho leans back and lights another smoke. His thick glasses make him look startled. A song crackles under a needle as he arranges scattered photographs. A solitaire hand that beats him every time. He wears his son ’ s crucifix.

His only boy, first caught in crossfire and then a crowded E.R. Shouts for back-up, a gurney, a god had filled ellipses beating from monitors. Finally, his son ’ s eyes had glassed over. Pacho gathers the pictures, scattering his ashes on the floor… Down the block a song

rises from St. Michael’ s church. A song about a shepherd who bled from a cross and promised salvation to his scattered flock. Two boys lounge in a back pew. Figures plead in panes of glass. Candle shadows shimmy like girls. Qué ritmo,

they crack, craving the bass beats that boom from cars. It’ s always the same song. The priest pours wine into the chalice studded with glass as voices climb the steeple ’ s cross and pierce the sky. On stone ledges, birds back away as a gust scatters

dust and leaves. Then they burst—scattering up like cards after drunk fists beat down… Pacho sticks the needle back into its track. From idling cars, songs unfurl like skulls and cross-bones. The woman at her window slides her glass.

Cross now, she beats the sill, scattering curses. (It’ s always the same song.) The boys saunter off, caps on backward, the grooves of their soles glistening with stained glass.

Angela Canales is a high school educator, freelance editor, translator and writer. She earned her master ’ s in Writing Studies from St. Joseph’ s University, and her story “Out of Nowhere ” was included in the 2009 anthology The Best of Philadelphia Stories: Volume 2. Most recently, she was included in the 2012 cast of Listen to Your Mother, a national 10-city reading series exploring the bond between mothers and children. couch, making me breakfast and lunch and filling up the tub for my baths. My grandmother, her gray hair in plastic curlers, came over every day to do laundry and eat dinner with us and take a bowl of soup to my mom. Sometimes, I saw my grandmother wiping her eyes with a handkerchief, and other times Aunt Clair stared straight ahead and didn ’t hear the phone ring or me asking her a question. They took me to the park a couple of times, but I just climbed the wooden steps in my flip-flops and loosely gripped the monkey bars. It didn ’t seem right to have fun when your brother was dead.

I missed David, but I still talked to him in my bedroom at night when everything was dark. He always appeared in his snowsuit, blowing into a paper cup. Steam rose in the shape of an O.

I hate him, he said, referring to Bill, who had started to come over each day and spend long hours in Mom ’ s room. Why can ’t he just go away and stop coming back?

Mom loves him, I heard myself whisper. Maybe he makes her feel better.

David shook his head. She has another kid, you know, and he nodded in my direction.

I stared back.

He ’ s not our real father, David said. She should stop pretending.

I shrugged. At least Bill comes back.

I’ m going to find him, Shelley, David said, and I knew he wasn ’t talking about Bill. He started to fade into nothingness again as I closed my eyes. Maybe that’ s why I died.

l

My mom didn ’t leave her room for days, but finally, on a Friday afternoon when Bill went to the store and Aunt Clair sat with me playing Legos, she appeared in the doorway to the living

room and looked around nervously. Mom had put on jeans and her favorite t-shirt, but her body looked like a deflated balloon. Her hair seemed to have grown since I last saw her.

“What are you guys doing?” she asked softly and sat down on the couch. I wondered if she ’d ever get her normal voice back, or if it was something that had left along with David.

“Playing Legos. I’ m making a house and a garage, ” I told her. “Aunt Clair is making a barn. ” I paused and leaned back on my feet. “Do you want to help?”

Mom shook her head, her hair greasy as she tucked it behind her ear. “I think I’ll just watch you. ” She gazed at me from the couch, her eyes falling to the floor. When I got up and went over to give her a hug, she held me so tight I thought she might not let go. It felt like I might stop breathing, but that would be okay.

l

There was a reason we never went to California.

The day after my mother had made her big announcement to us in the living room, the sunlight streaming like tentacles around her, David’ s school had called and said he was being “ expelled. ” He bit a girl on the shoulder and then tried to hurt his teacher when she pulled him away. Security had to come and keep him in the principal’ s office. As the bus dropped me off and I saw her car in the driveway, I knew something was wrong. Usually the babysitter, Theresa, stayed with us after school, watching soap operas in her bare feet with an algebra book open on the coffee table.

The first person I saw was David, sitting on the loveseat with his head down and his hands tucked under his legs. He didn ’t look up when I came in, although I knew he heard the door. His eyes seemed to be transfixed by a pull in the couch, cushiony white stuffing that bulged through beige corduroy. My mother was on the phone arguing with someone, yelling about “this condition ” and “What am I supposed to do with him?”

I put my backpack down and sat on the couch next to David, tucking my hands under my legs, too. “What happened?” I asked.

He shook his head and kept looking down. “I was bad. ”

We both listened to Mom on the phone telling the story, her voice growing squeaky and desperate.

Finally, after a few minutes of my staring at David and his staring at the couch cushion, Mom came out of the kitchen and looked at us.

“Listen, Shelley. I’ m going to drop you off at Mary ’ s, and I have to take David somewhere. ”

“Where?”

“To a doctor. So you ’ re going to go to Mary ’ s, okay? She ’ s having spaghetti for dinner. I told her you love that. ” Mom knelt down in front of David and touched his knees. “David, we ’ re going to go talk to someone for a little while, okay? I think you ’ll like him. ” I was surprised by how nice she was being to him, treating him like a sick old person.

David looked up after a minute and nodded, then returned his gaze to the cushion.

“Come on, Shelley. Grab your backpack. Mary will help you with your homework. ”

She got up and led David toward the door. He kept his head still, his eyes sad as a dog ’ s.

That night, I stayed with Mary Connors, our neighbor from a couple of houses over, until 10 o ’ clock. I watched TV with her kids, ate spaghetti, and helped put the dishes in the dishwasher. Mr. Connors even bought us milkshakes from the pizza parlor around the corner. By the time Mom came back to get me, I was sleeping on the couch in a pair of someone else ’ s pajamas. I was only half-conscious as she led me into the front seat of the car and took me home. The next morning, Mom didn ’t get ready for work as usual, because she said she had to stay with David. It wasn ’t until I saw Bill sitting on the couch, after school, smoking a cigarette and staring out of the window, that I remembered our big plans. He looked over at me, but slowly turned his head again. Mom came in from David’ s bedroom and asked me if I wanted a snack.

“Are we still going to California?” I asked, looking at her, then at Bill.

“Come on, Shelley. Do you want some pretzels? Or crackers?” She waved me into the kitchen.

Later, I heard Mom and Bill shouting in the bedroom, Mom saying something about “ stability ” and Bill shouting back, “ your promise. ” They fought every day until the night he stomped out the door, David and I listening on our hands and knees from the top of the stairs. I don ’t know if Bill would have come back if not for David’ s funeral.

l

Before David jumped in front of the truck, he looked at me. I thought it was an angry look at first, but now I think it was his way of saying goodbye. He wasn ’t good at talking, at explaining why he got so angry all the time. Mom couldn ’t figure out what it was that caused him to explode. Maybe he knew that day at the yard sale that nothing would ever change. Maybe he wanted to escape.

After school and during the summers, Mom often nagged David to play outside with the other kids his age, to start a game of kickball, to make friends. What she didn ’t realize was I was his only friend in the whole world.

I talk to David each night before I go to bed. I tell him that Mom is doing

better, that I even saw her laugh during a movie she was watching with Bill, that her giggle was like a burst of flowers in the house. I tell him that Aunt Clair and Grandmom left when Bill moved back, that I saw him hugging Grandmom in the kitchen and swaying back and forth with her, tears in his eyes.

You mean, you saw him cry? David asks.

Yes, I say, my eyes wide. It was weird.

I tell him that we ’ re planning to move to another house. A fresh start.

Hmm, he says, and listens. More than anything else, the white-snowsuit-David always listens.

l

“My mother says it’ s a tragedy that your brother died and your father still didn ’t come back. ” It is recess, September, about four months after David’ s death. Even though Mom and Bill and I moved, I still go to the same school. Sometimes, I wish I could go somewhere else, a place where no one knows about my young dead brother. Now, Molly Leonard corners me by the fence, where I am tracing pictures in the dirt. She blows bubbles with her gum—which she isn ’t supposed to have—and waits for a reaction.

I wish our playground had swings, or even a sliding board, but all kids do during recess is chase each other and stand in circles and ask stupid questions. “Well, ” I say finally, my forefinger drawing tiny clouds in the dirt. “My father did come back. He bought us the new house we ’ re living in. ”

“Oh. ” She pauses. “But my mom said he lived far away. ”

My heart stops for a second. And then I remember what David told me a few nights ago, that he flew around the country for days, looking to find where our biological father was. He even asked some old people while they were shoveling snow in heaven. Poof, they told David. Gone. Just like a magic trick. “Well, your mom is wrong, ” I tell Molly.

Molly is quiet as she drags the side of her shoe against the dirt.

“My father drives me to school in his car every morning. And he helps my mom make dinner. ” My finger traces another line in the dirt, a boy with spikes coming out of his back, like a dragon. “That’ s your stepfather, though. Not your real dad. Not the man who made you with your mom. ” She holds her palms up, her hip cocked to the side. “See?” I shake my head and stand up to correct her. I begin to smooth over my picture with the toe of my shoe. “No. Bill is my dad. All your dad needs to do is love you to be a dad. ” Mrs. Cohen, my new third grade teacher, starts to ring the bell from the school steps, our sign that recess is over.

“Well, that can ’t be. Cause how is he different from an uncle, then? Or a brother?”

The picture I made is gone, smoothed over like sand. Tomorrow, I’ll come to the same spot and make another one, like I do every day at recess. “Because an uncle has his own family he lives with. And a brother is someone your own age. ” I run to the school steps to get away from Molly, and I look up into the sky and roll my eyes.

Molly Leonard, I whisper.

Such a brat, David says.

I get in line behind Judith Paulson and in front of Gary Pullman, right where Peterson fits in, the name I share only with David.

Couch by Suzie Forrester © 2012 Jana Llewellyn taught English and writing for over a decade. She is now Associate Editor at Friends Journal magazine. She lives in Havertown with her husband, son and daughter. "Igloo " was a runner up in the 2012 Marguerite McGlinn National Short Story contest.